Integrity, Researcher Identity, and Islands: An interpretive approach to exploring individual and disciplinary values through creative metaphors
This project investigates how emerging researchers engage with Research Integrity (RI) values in the context of their disciplines at a South African higher education institution (HEI). RI is a growing field of study, to which scholars are drawn from a wide range of disciplines, from administrative or management offices in HEIs and even journal editors and publishers. In this context, understanding how researchers engage with RI and choose to enact or contest RI values and normative assumptions within their disciplinary spaces can contribute towards the expanding body of RI scholarship. The project took a creative an interpretive approach to examining themes around researcher identities, disciplinary discourses, and engagement with RI. Participants completed a pre-interview exercise by developing a ‘researcher identity map' and reflective commentary. This was used as a tool for discussion and exploration during a semi-structured interview. Data artefacts were analysed abductively and iteratively using the interpretive tools provided by the domain of specialisation in the Legitimation Code Theory toolkit. This iterative process resulted in a translation device developed specifically for this data. The data were analysed using the translation device which focuses on epistemic relations and social relations in the context of the participants' disciplines. A key finding of this project is that, while disciplines do play an important role in mediating researchers' relations to and with RI, it is the personal attributes of individual researchers that are most likely to drive the nature of their engagement with the field. As RI matures, it is therefore important to adopt a differentiated approach to RI training that emphasises the perspectives and values of individual researchers; engages with the epistemic relations and social relations legitimated by their disciplines and works with how those values impact on RI practice in disciplinary contexts.
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